The Rapture Index has two functions: one is to factor together a number of related end time
components into a cohesive indicator, and the other is to standardize those components to
eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting.

I'm an advocate of mourning, but I can't say I've really mourned. Well, maybe a bit, at the beginning. The anniversary brings it back; I did feel something, but I hate to say, a year later, that the overriding experience has been that of alienation. It's worse than the early Reagan years. I define alienation as the inability to achieve ecstasy via accepted cultural modes. Tears are the ecstasy of grief, and I don't think I ever cried over it. But I did share in a deep sorrow for the people who died, and for the wound made in our city. Beyond that I find little focus, and now the ecstasy of grief channels into the ecstasy of war-making, and I am sickened. Circumstance has granted the countering voice but little force, and the ecstasy of peace seems far away. This species often displays together its best and its most terrible faces. But these are just expressions, alternating on the same face. Prayers are not to ease the past, but to work eternity into a shape that may explain what is done to us, and what we do to ourselves. If we are finished now with mourning, let us pray for the living.Pray for peace. Then work for it.

this may have been previously reported but a pal told me today that last year right before 9/11 there were raids on small records store and bootlegs were confiscated, all the evidence was lost in the twin towers, so no arrests....- Skinny 9-11-2002 4:15 am [link] [add a comment]

This one should be interesting. Imagine if the person they are going to have to intimidate into not making the sworn confession turns out to have some stubborn ethics? Or it doesn't even have to be that. Maybe the person is just a democrat.

This Saturday September 7th, The Lonely Samoans needs you! Please help us
fill the air with your love! Please bring your loved ones and touch each
other so I can watch you make out from the stage.
Saturday, September 7th. 9pm
@the Cutting Room
19 W. 24th Street. $5 cover
Tel:212.691.1900
Also I made a music video for "Mr. Corporation" over the weekend.
out. check it out
http://www.lonelysamoans.com/video/mr_corp_2.mov
\- bill 9-06-2002 5:42 pm [link] [1 ref] [add a comment]

I was wondering about "billy-oh", a term my dad used to use. He would say "it's going to rain like billy-oh". Or maybe it was billy-ho; I was never quite sure, and I don't remember hearing the phrase elsewhere. I don't know where he picked it up, but it turns out to be of British idiom. What surprised me is that "billy-oh" is considered synonymous with the American "all get out". Go figure.- alex 9-05-2002 7:27 pm [link] [add a comment]

I took the ferry to work today. They've just instituted service from Hunter's Point to downtown, and the first week is free, so I thought I'd check it out. It's a much more pleasant ride than the subway, and only takes 8 minutes on the water. Unfortunately, the whole thing doesn't add up for me. Even with a monthly discount rate it costs more than twice as much as the subway, without the flexibility and in-town service. Once you factor in the walk to and from the terminals, it winds up taking just as long. Only 7 people on the 7:30 boat today. It's a nice idea, but I'm not sure it can stay afloat. - alex 9-04-2002 6:53 pm [link] [add a comment]

the bush dyslexicon - I heard another much more indebth interview yesterday (laborday) with the arthor which will apear here archived in 8 days for a relisten.- bill 9-03-2002 6:57 pm [link] [13 comments]

What’s with George Will? Now he’s stargazing in Hawaii, pondering the mysteries and trotting out Terence’s favorite quote about “stranger than we can suppose” (though without attribution to Haldane.) Has he been listening to the Shamen?

WFMU, New York/New Jersey's prime purveyor of freeform radio sounds, is
sponsoring a station benefit on Saturday, September 21st, at 8:00 PM at
Southpaw, 125 Fifth Avenue between Sterling and St. John's Place in Park
Slope, Brooklyn.

On the bill: ESG, Outhud, Brother JT3, the Styrenes. DJing provided by
David Grubbs. Tickets are on sale at Ticketweb.com, and Other Music (15
East 4th Street, New York City), and are $12 with all proceeds to benefit
the nonprofit, independent, listener-sponsored station. Tickets will also
be on sale at Southpaw the night of the show.

About the acts:
ESG began as four sisters and a friend emerging from the South Bronx with
trancy, minimalist grooves, scratchy guitar, and heady funk rhythms that
wound up influencing multiple musical camps from indie rock to hip hop to
No Wave. They've been sampled umpteenth times by higher profile names than
themselves (see their 1992 single "Sample Credits Don't Pay Our
Bills") and rarely play out these days, which makes it more of an honor to
have them on the WFMU bill. They have a brand new album forthcoming on the
UK Soul Jazz label, which also issued a compilation last year of ESG's
older material. The band has had quite a cult in the UK as well, even back
to their inception, where Factory Records' Tony Wilson was blown away
by the band and got them in the studio with Martin Hannett (Joy Division,
A Certain Ratio).

OUTHUD are a New York group of transplants from Sacramento (where half of
their other project !!! remains), and specialize in danceably rocking
grooves laden with processed effects, heavy echo, repetitive rhythms and
respectful nods to like minds as Gang of Four, Joy Division, New Order,
PiL, King Tubby. They have a forthcoming disc on the Kranky label.

BROTHER JT is a true purveyor of psychedelic soul, hailing from Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, where he also fronted garage-pop legends the Original Sins
for most of the 80's and 90's. Backed by drummer Jamie Knerr and bassist
Bill Melcher, Brother JT's live sets swerve from classic Nuggets fuzz
rock to pure bubblegum to all-out acid-soaked psychedelic rants and are
amazing events to behold. He has two new discs out right now: Maybe We
Should Take Some More (Birdman) and Spirituals (Drag City, produced by
Neil Hagerty or Royal Trux and solo fame).

THE STYRENES are the one band that can wear the overused publicity tag
"artpunk legends" and not be challenged. Hailing from Cleveland, called
the "fertile dungheap of 1970's punk rock" by giving birth to such
luminaries as the Electric Eels, Rocket From the Tomb, Pere Ubu, and the
Dead Boys, the Styrenes crawled from the ashes of those bands with ex-Eels
and Mirrors members and now reside in our fair city. Not content to be
stylized into a genre, the band melds punk, prog, psychedelia, jazz, and
even pure 20th Century classical composition into its sound. There is a
new release of their early recordings out now called It's Still Artastic
(ROIR) as well as a newly recorded and quite rocking take on Terry Riley's
famous In C (Enja Records). Members John Morton and Paul Marotta are also
featured in the band Amoeba Raft Boy, whose recent release Bad Fuggum From
the Mysterium (Smog Veil Records) features a healthy chunk of tunes
recorded live in WFMU's studios in 1996.

DAVID GRUBBS knows a thing or two about good music, having been a member
of the Red Krayola, Gastr del Sol, Bitch Magnet, and Bastro as well as
producing many fine solo records. He'll be manning the wheels of steel at
the WFMU benefit tonight.

Axis of EvelOne (fleeting) regret on the Montana trip was missing Evel Week in Butte. That’s Evel as in Knievel, favorite son of the tapped-out town. NY Press sent a reporter. Paints too pretty a picture if you ask me. But what do I know: I went to Maloney’s.- alex 8-21-2002 3:25 am [link] [3 comments]

Sad to hear that Bill's beloved mutt, Mother, has died. I'm not the biggest fan of dogs, but Mother was as sweet as they come. Good owners make for good dogs, and maybe she was grateful for being rescued from a hard life, but she was about as laid back as a canine could be. I'll always remember tromping around Buck's County with her in the Autumn leaves. Our sympathies go out.

In better pet news, we hear that Polycat is doing well in Montana, and two slightly irregular kittens have found a home…

NY Post gossip guru Neal Travis, the original Page Six editor, is dead. The Post is no longer a down-and-dirty tabloid, having repositioned itself as a secondary read to the Times. I guess it's the "ironic" paper. Guys like Travis, shown here (at right) with drunken Steve Dunleavy, a fellow Murdoch running-dog, were transitional figures who retained something of the aura of the old dailies.- alex 8-15-2002 5:58 pm [link] [add a comment]

I was wondering about those ubiquitous Chevy ads, the "walking on the sun" campaign. Did they buy a Zombies song and re-write it? No, Christopher Caldwell of NY Press explains that it's Smash Mouth, in the process of selling out. (see "In Any Event" down the page) But I don't buy his critique. It's not that these folks don't understand irony; the situation is the height of irony, or what irony used to mean. In fact, it's so ironic it's subversive, but in the wrong direction. Nowadays irony is just the echo chamber of meaninglessness; postmodernism's aversion to any commitment requiring a value judgement. 'Course I knew that years ago, which is why I thought the Clash were a joke even then. Smash Mouth and the admen are all of one condition: nobody sells out anymore; they just buy in. And the moral is: the only thing you have to pay the Zombies is homage. - alex 8-13-2002 12:33 am [link] [4 comments]